“Eugh I hate swamps” Tandra whispers a complaint as her foot squelches deep into the bog, shlopping as she steps forward.

“They do say mud is perfect for your skin” The man whispers back, flinging a handful of mud towards her.

It mashes onto the side of her head, clinging to her greasy golden hair.

Biting back the scream of anger that wells up inside her, she just looks at him, imagining herself ripping out his jaw so he can’t grin like he’s doing right now.

Though she knows she can’t draw blood, not yet at least.

Travelling through the swamp in the past week, they had learnt a deal of ‘rules’ on how to not die in it.

First and foremost, they had to avoid the more boggy parts in case of quickmud or giant mud-snakes, which were no fun to encounter.

Secondly, noise was a no go since it attracted monsters, and everything in this swamp seemed to be around level fifty. That was double her level, a scary fact indeed.

Blood also attracted monsters, usually the more undead type.

They learnt of this quite early on with a few undead attacks, but there was little they could do about the attacks, except outrun them.

“Uuuuuuuurh” A soft moan comes from behind, quickly accompanied by a small horde of moaning and groaning sounds.

“Shit, we better hurry up Tandra” He starts slogging through the mud faster.

At least today the horde of zombies that are following them are only a few dozen strong.

“Really, how long are these guys going to follow us?” She exasperates before picking up the pace.

“Maybe for a few more hours?” He shrugs and continues on, ignoring the groaning zombies behind.

They trudge along with the accompanying sounds, eyes roaming the horizon in search of something that isn’t just swamp.

They had spent a week travelling to the swamp, and another travelling through. Yet they had found nothing.

The only highlight from those past two weeks was seeing that brutally buff veteran dropping down the cliff, around a story a drop.

He had said hi but seemed to be too busy to idly chat.

Apart from that, their life has been one foot in front of the other with no real destination to go.

She had no idea where they were going, or what they were looking for in reality, but all she had to do is look at him to believe he’s got some idea.

The man is insane, but he’s proven to be pretty trustworthy so far, so she does.

They walk for another few hours, slowly leaving the zombies in the distance as well as the waning sun.

However before it disappears under the earth once more, it’s beams of light bounce off a pile of grey rubble, illuminating a stone scythe, with strange lines jutting out from it, and bits of a circle, in the shape of a hand.

Curious at so what the rubble is, she points it over to the man, who has already noticed it and is already heading towards it.

Following him, they quickly reach the rubble and find it to be on solid ground.

“A church” The man says with a voice filled with pity.

She raises an eyebrow, wondering as to how the man knows what the rubble is.

Walking up to it, she begins stalking around, trying to search for any clues of it’s demise.

“What happened here?”

“I have a feeling…it was that man”

She raises her eyebrows in confusion “The old guy with the rippling muscles?”

“Yes…remember how I told you he murdered all the priests of Aval?”

Nodding, she keeps searching.

The man however, begins moving some stones away, prying at what’s buried under.

She starts to help.

Within an hour, all they found was bone dust, a few robed skeletons smashed to smithereens and a thick red tome with black pulsating lines, sealed in a smashed stone case.

The man had become immediately interested in the tome, staring at the unintelligible words on its front cover while sitting underneath the stone scythe.

Tandra however, spent a short while longer looking under rocks before giving up, tired.

“Are you going to stare at it forever?” She asks him to which he responds with a sigh and a shake of his head.

“No, I’d rather read it but doesn’t seem like I know the language yet” Sighing deeply, he despawns it into his inventory, or tries to at least.

The tome spawns back into the world, dropping on his lap, much to the surprise of both of them.

“Huh, that’s new” They both exclaim in mild wonder.

Trying again, the same happens, so he shrugs his shoulders and hoists it under his arm.

“Guess it’ll drop if I die then?”

Tandra shrugs, but suspects the same.

“So what now then?” She looks around, lost as to what their next course of action is.

“Good question…give me a minute” He muses, stroking his ever shaven jaw.

He paces around for a few minutes, while she pulls her bow a bit, the sound of clacking bones sending tranquility into her.

It was strange how used to the bow she had grown, but then again once she got past the fact that it was made out of human parts, it’s a fantastic thing…powerful too.

“Aha!” His sudden shout makes her jump, releasing the bow with a powerful snap.

Motherly, she hugs and strokes the bow, whispering sorry at dry-firing it, before looking at the grinning man with slight anger.

“I’ve found a way!” He exclaims happily, bounding towards her and stealing the knife from her belt.

She doesn’t even bother to ask as her dreading suspects become real.

The blood gushes from his throat and he chucks the tome towards her with a bloody grin.

She expected it, since most of his ideas end up in his death for some strange, insane reason...

Grabbing the tome, she calmly watches the man stab himself in the heart and then through the eye before he collapses dead, upon the knife, having it protrude out the back of his head.

“Fanfuckingtastic, now what?” She kicks his dead corpse, wondering just how he was going to contact her and why the hell he killed himself.

“IIIIIIIII’MMM BBBAAAAAAAAAAACCCCKKK BBBAAAAAABBBYYYYY” A cacophonic voice echoes through the swamp, arriving from the north and most assuredly being the man’s voice.

Slapping herself hard on the forehead, she starts moving as fast as she can towards the man’s location, feeling like he’s just aggro’d everything in a few miles.

Funnily enough, it doesn’t seem like it, as after successfully dodging a few groups of zombies and following the cacophonic noise on seemingly endless commentary on how beautiful the world is, she arrives at a swampy graveyard, only noticeable by the multitude of half-sunk gravestones surrounded by a swamped fence.

The man stands at foot-height gates, stopping his shouting when he sees Tandra.

“Hey, you made it” He waves and bounds towards her, grabbing the tome and giving her back her knife.

“Really, do you want to agro everything within two miles?” She jabs him on the chest, to which he just shrugs.

“I was just trying something out. Seems like the undead don’t care what I do!” He chuckles and yells as loud as he can into the open air, before getting a chopping hand in the neck.

While he gasps for air, she glances around to check for enemies, finding none.

“Ok” she swivels round towards his voice, aiming another hand “BEFORE you keep doing that, how about I tell you why I killed myself”

Her hand drops back down to her side.

“Well you see, I’ve had two weeks to think about what Tesurc said. And I think I may have a little lead on something”

“What?” She raises an eyebrow, taking the bait.

“Maybe a portal or something, not quite sure yet, but there’s one way to find out” He grins and points towards the graves with a spade he’s somehow obtained.

…

..

.

“And you call yourself a priest…shame on you” She shakes her head, but still takes the spade and begins digging, the curiosity taking over.

“It’s just bones” He shrugs non-committaly “plus they’re worshippers of the enemy”

He joins in by digging with his hands, animalisticly and barking, making himself laugh as he works.

The graveyard itself is only wide enough for a few thousand graves. And since most are sunk underneath the bog, it takes quite a while and effort to dig deeply into it, deep enough to find a corpse.

Hours pass with them digging up graves, finding nothing but dirt in each grave.

Slowly she became more and more curious as to how there were no corpses, but then the memory of the necromancer reminded her.

“The high priest was probably a necromancer” He states as they dig, sending waves of delight at her correct thinking, though the idea of a necromancer being a high priest wasn’t a nice thought.

For hours upon hours they dig. Till the sun rises and begins to dip once more.

To her it felt almost as bad as when they were in the caves, but at least the man is helping this time.

Slowly, they move through all the graves, smashing the gravestone after checking what’s beneath so as to mark their progress.

She had thought it a tad bit heartless at the beginning, but when she ended up digging the same grave three times for over an hour; she convinced herself it was ok, that the corpses wouldn’t mind the desecration.

She was kind of worried how she had more sympathy for the dead than the actual priest.

When the moon rises high, they take a long break, drenched with sweat and sore from all the digging.

Although all they’ve dug is barely a hundred graves.

Sitting down in the sludgy mud, Tandra leans against a grave tired and wanting to sleep.

The man plops down beside her.

“Damn this is going to take forever” He exclaims with a tired sigh.

“Well if we keep digging every grave then yeah” She yawns, stretching her arms in sync.

“Hmm, maybe dig the one in the center?” He questions, wondering if that would produce anything.

She looks at him as if he’s stupid.

“What? I was thinking that the more important graves are in the middle of the graveyard right?”

“They’re usually in the nicer side of the graveyard” She replies with a hint of sadness, remembering she’s got to visit soon.

“DO you see any nice side?” He sweeps his hand across the land, gesturing towards the monotonic swamp graveyard.

“Fair point…guess we’ll go with your way then” She stands up groggily, wiling her body to work since she’d rather get this over and done with now then sleep in sludgy mud.

The quickly locate what the center of the graveyard would be and begin digging the graves there.

Soon enough, two digs reveal something.

In one grave, lies a rotting skeleton, while in the other, a small urn, which when they opened turned out to be white, luminescent ash.

“Oh my lord its ghost dust!” He squeals happily and chucks the remains of a ghost around, watching it brightly twinkle as it floats in the sky carried by the wind.

Until now, they had only found zombie corpses within their graves, so to find two different things was quite strange.

After the man had finished desecrating the ghost’s remains, he told Tandra which grave to dig.

Digging it, revealed the usual zombie corpse, much to her surprise.

They spend another few hours digging dozens of graves, revealing ghost remains, which the man stole into his inventory, skeletons and zombies.

As they dug, the man marked the divide between the different types of corpses using their gravestones.

Then, he created a circle of gravestones between the different corpse types, where no graves were put, which was a small area, enough to fit maybe four graves.

When this was complete, there was a small area untouched by both graves and them, inside the circle of gravestones.

“Seems like we’ve found something!” He jumps up excitedly, while Tandra does not.

She doesn’t really get why he thinks making a circle over an empty patch means anything, much less making one based on the divide between the corpse types.

However she is proved wrong as he digs through, quickly revealing a deep hole falling straight down.

His eyes flash adventurously and he looks towards her with his cheeky grin of his.

“Not aga-”

“KAWABUNGAAAAAAAAAAA-” His voice cuts short, not to her surprise.

But what does surprise her is the fact that she didn’t hear the cracking of bones…or anything in fact.

“I fucking hate it when he doesn’t just chill for a second and plan things out” She grumbles to herself before storming towards the hole, closing her eyes and jumping into the darkness below.

Suddenly her body plunges into something thick, something viscous that engulfed her calmly like a foamy bed.

But soon it entraps her, constricts her body, throbbing with life as it pushes against her tightly sealed lips.

She tries to move, but her body responds poorly, as if she were in custard and going in slow motion.

It burns, like acid, like fire, like someone squeezing their finger into a fresh wound, but all over her body.

The pain quickly overwhelms her, forcing a silent scream from her mouth and the gelatinous air to jam itself down her throat, blacking her out from consciousness.

The last thought before whatever this was consumed her, was thinking of how to murder him best.

…

“Eeeuugh that was horrible. At least I survived this portal it seems” The man shivers at the memory of the burning as it had torn him inside out, when he last travelled through a portal.

Though somehow he had survived it this time, albeit the experience was quite different this time: His body was engulfed like before, but instead of burning him, it just sort of resisted him as he moved, stretching as he clawed his way through and out of the portal.

Extremely mild compared to his first experience of being actively digested from both inside and out.

Although, there was the sound of ripping of skin when he’d escaped.

Looking down at his hands, he sees the pink flesh beneath, with no skin in sight.

Eyes travelling up his arm and chest, he sees the same has happened there too, although the tome seems unharmed, rather its black veins pulsate almost erratically.

“Huh, lucky I’m kind of use to this” He chuckles lightly, looking away from his raw pink body “Now, where the hell am I?”

…

Cannith growled as he ripped through a pack of zombies, making sure none of their festering teeth or claws get close to his bare skin.

He once had an experience with death-rot, and he never wanted to experience it again.

“Bloody hell, how many of the fuckers are around here?” He punches one in rusty armor, his fist bursting through. “Agh, bloody hate rusty metal”.

Sucking the blood off his scratched knuckles, he continues to bound through the swamp, his powerful leg blasting mud into the air.

Taking out his tiny notepad mid-stride, he grumbles darkly.

“Well that goddamned church was a bust too... and now I’m down to one lead. Fourteen churches…fourteen bloody churches, eight dark dealers, seven bloody months and not a single fucking clue…”

He grabs a nearby lumbering zombie by the neck, cracking it angrily and tossing it without breaking stride.

“Dammit where is my Lieutenant when I need him…I have no fucking idea what I’m doing anymore. Aaaaaaargh!!!”

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Author's Corner:

Wooh got a chapter done....even though i realllly should be revising, but then again I really couldn't be bothered today...Anyway, ignoring me failing to keep my promise to not write any chapters...here it is!

Warning, the end of this arc is coming pretty quick! I guess this arc was pretty chill, with mostly introductions to characters.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed the chapter and hope you keep on reading!

Please comment and reviewwww!!!

-TRUE NORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRD